Cisco IOS XR up to 7.2.12 Resource Public Key Infrastructure assertion

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Cisco IOS XR. The impacted element is an unknown function of the component Resource Public Key Infrastructure. This manipulation causes assertion. This vulnerability is registered as CVE-2021-1440. Remote exploitation of the attack is possible. No exploit is available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in Cisco IOS XR. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code of the component Resource Public Key Infrastructure. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a assertion vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-617. The product contains an assert() or similar statement that can be triggered by an attacker, which leads to an application exit or other behavior that is more severe than necessary. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

A vulnerability in the implementation of the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) feature of Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) process to crash, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to the incorrect handling of a specific RPKI to Router (RTR) Protocol packet header. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by compromising the RPKI validator server and sending a specifically crafted RTR packet to an affected device. Alternatively, the attacker could use man-in-the-middle techniques to impersonate the RPKI validator server and send a specifically crafted RTR response packet over the established RTR TCP connection to the affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a DoS condition because the BGP process could constantly restart and BGP routing could become unstable.Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.This advisory is part of the September 2021 release of the Cisco IOS XR Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication. For a complete list of the advisories and links to them, see .

It is possible to read the advisory at sec.cloudapps.cisco.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2021-1440 since 11/13/2020. The exploitation appears to be difficult. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 08/01/2025).

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Productinfo

Type

• Router Operating System

Vendor

• Cisco

Name

• IOS XR

Version

• 6.5.1
• 6.5.2
• 6.5.3
• 6.6.1
• 6.6.2
• 6.6.3
• 6.6.4
• 6.6.11
• 6.6.12
• 6.6.25
• 7.0.1
• 7.0.2
• 7.0.11
• 7.0.12
• 7.0.14
• 7.0.90
• 7.1.1
• 7.1.2
• 7.2.1
• 7.2.2
• 7.2.12

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.cisco.com/

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